able to provide any conjecture as to their nature.”
The two Israelis exchanged glances. “Why did you disrupt our surveillance of the interrogation room?” Shoham demanded, clearing his throat.
Harry leaned forward, lacing his fingers together. “You’ve witnessed for yourselves the emotional state I found Dr. Tal in. He was insistent that everything he shared must stay between the two of us. I needed to take steps of good faith. The man is a basketcase. I frankly don’t know what you’ve done to him, but…”
He let the comment hang there, an unspoken accusation dangling in the air. The Mossad commander seemed on the brink of an angry retort, but he choked it down. “We don’t torture our own, Mr. Nichols. I regret that you could not be more helpful, but I appreciate your willingness to try.”
“Of course,” Harry responded, rising from his chair. The bodyguard opened the door and he exited, stage right, into the corridor.
“He was lying,” Gideon observed, moments after the door had closed.
Avi ben Shoham sighed heavily, his eyes scanning the rough notes in front of him. “I know it.”
The lieutenant’s hand moved toward the phone on the table. “I can call security.”
“To what purpose? His government knows exactly where he is. Causing an incident with the Americans is not in our best interests, particularly if the Iranians have something in the offing. This will be a waiting game, lieutenant. In the mean time, we work with what we still have. Get a team working on Tal again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re dismissed.” Gideon had made it half-way to the door when the general’s voice arrested him. “And, Lt. Laner.”
“Yes?”
“I will need the contact information for Nathan Gur’s next of kin. See that it gets to my desk by this evening, if you please.”
“Of course, sir.”
The car from Station Tel Aviv was waiting for Harry in the parking garage and he got in, beginning a careful search for bugs. He was exhausted, emotionally drained from the stress of the interrogation. Tal was a good man, of that he was sure.
He leaned back in the seat of the car, closing his eyes. It didn’t help-the face of the Israeli rose before him, playing across the back of his eyelids. A basketcase, yeah, he was that. And he had helped make him that way.
Harry had seen men like Tal before-it wasn’t Stockholm, but a syndrome similar in effect. Men who seemed to shut down, forsaking their mission in a panicked attempt to save those around them. The world seemed to withdraw into narrow focus, a world in which nothing else mattered.
Playing upon those loyalties had been the only way to break him. And despite what he had told Shoham, the results had been worth it.
He found a mike under the steering wheel and ripped it out, crushing the small instrument before tossing it from the window as the car left the underground garage. Reaching inside his pocket for the TACSAT, he allowed himself a small, tired smile.
“This is Nichols,” he announced when the encryption sequence finished. “I need you to run an inter-agency database sweep for me. Yes, of course I have a name. Achmed Asefi.”
The door opened abruptly and the Ayatollah Isfahani emerged from the room where he had been in conference with Hossein for the past several hours. “It’s time to go,” he announced quietly, turning to the man who had been standing outside the door the entire time.
Achmed Asefi nodded wordlessly and led the way out of the building, his eyes alert to any and all potential threats. There had been two attempts on the Ayatollah’s life in the thirteen years he had served him as bodyguard. He had killed both assassins with his own hand, earning himself the implicit trust of his master.
But now… They were wading into treacherous waters. The sentry at the helipad saluted briskly at their approach. Asefi regarded him with the hooded eyes of a bird of prey, considering and then rejecting him as a source of trouble.
He opened the door of the helicopter, ushering the Ayatollah inside before entering himself. Seating himself at the side of his principal, he caught a glimpse of the major standing outside the mosque.
“I don’t trust that man,” he observed. “He is not a true believer.”
“Hossein?” Isfahani asked, casting a sidelong glance at his bodyguard.
A nod served as the only reply, Asefi’s eyes still fixed on the subject of their conversation as the helicopter rose into the air.
The Ayatollah shrugged. “Neither do I. Which is why you will accompany him to Al Quds.”
It had taken over an hour to ride the final three kilometers to the ford. The horses were tiring, as were they. The wind was lessening, but the rain still beat down upon their soaked, weary bodies.
She urged the grey up the slope ahead, and over the thunder of the ebbing storm Thomas heard the sharp gasp that broke from her lips.
“What is it?” he asked, reining in his horse abreast of her. Before she could respond, his own eyes had given him the answer.
The ford could be seen below them, through a screen of trees. A ford? Swollen by the rain, it looked more like a raging torrent. They had lost their race with the storm.
Thomas looked over into her eyes, reading the exhaustion written there. Knowing it was mirrored in his own.
There was no time for indecision. They both knew it. After a long moment, Estere spoke. “We’ve got to go through.”
“What?” Thomas exclaimed. “Cross that?”
“I’ve seen it higher,” she asserted. She turned toward him, a stubborn look on her face. “It’s a ride of over a hundred kilometers to go around.”
“How long would it take to subside?”
“Days, if it stops raining.” She sat there in the rain for a moment or two longer, then announced her decision. “We need to find shelter-we’ll rest the horses till morning and then make the attempt.”
“I have target clear, Vic. Subjects have left the residence.”
“Separately or together?”
“Separately. They were dressed for work.”
“Good.” Vic stuck the cellphone back in his pocket and exited the rental car, pulling a packet of tracts from his pocket as he moved up the sidewalk. The pamphlets bore the logo of the Watchtower Society and he smiled at the irony.
He left tracts at two of the houses on his way up the cul-de-sac, then approached the Sarami’s house. Kazem Sarami served as a lawyer in a prominent Dayton firm and was handling a case before the Ohio State Supreme
